Economic power seldom needs to discipline those who might challenge it. Most of the time, they do it to themselves. However extreme the ideologies promoted by corporations and oligarchs, organisational life falls broadly into line. The media, political parties, even pressure groups, accept the basic premises, preposterous as they may be, of whatever variety of capitalism currently dominates.
But occasionally, someone needs to be slapped into line. This is what happened last week, when one of the world’s biggest conservation groups, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, apologised for calling the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and his secretaries of state, Michael Gove and Thérèse Coffey, to account for abandoning their environmental commitments. These ministers, it had claimed, were liars. Tory MPs and the billionaire press had gone berserk, demanding, among other measures, that the Charity Commission strike out the RSPB’s charitable status. The commission, always a compliant instrument of power, said it was considering the issue. The RSPB promised in future to campaign in a “polite and considered manner”.
